"Sharp, quirky, and occasionally nettlesome", Walking the Berkshires is my personal blog, an eclectic weaving of human narrative, natural history, and other personal passions with the Berkshire and Litchfield Hills as both its backdrop and point of departure. I am interested in how land and people, past and present manifest in the broader landscape and social fabric of our communities. The opinions I express here are mine alone. Never had ads, never will.

June 28, 2007

Things slow down across the English-speaking Blogosphere during the summer months. Some regular readers seek their entertainment out of doors and away from computer screens, while others who tend to read blogs at work go on vacation - or are fired for misuse of company resources. In my case, a blissful week completely unplugged awaits on Monhegan Island in Maine beginning this Friday, so in the best tradition of network television, Walking the Berkshires will go into reruns. The following posts are selected to reward rereading and offer fresh discovery. Enjoy, or better yet grab your swimsuit and picnic basket and head outdoors. We will resume our regular blogcasts when I'm back from Down East.

June 27, 2007

DEC the Jungle Trader has a wry but respectful post about the persistence of the supernatural in the modern world. Something of an enigma himself, DEC is a frequent commenter at Tigerhawk but his own highly entertaining blog is a "read only" affair, filled with glimpses of exotic animals, snippets of tribal justice and an occasional whiff of black magic. What distinguishes his blog from devolving into a Little Shop of Horrors is the evenhanded way in which the proprietor treats his material and his willingness to take superstition on its own terms. Perhaps this reflects a pragmatism learned over the years as an international businessman working to win clients from vastly different cultural backgrounds, or maybe he has seen enough to give the supernatural its due. Either way, DEC's dry wit and unique perspective can make for a very entertaining read.

It brought to mind a night in Windhoek, Namibia, watching heat lighting flash over the city. A party was winding down at one of the better residences on the south side of town. Our host was a genial Irishman in the foreign service who had tried all night without success to score with one of the lovely "host country nationals" in attendance. The other guests had departed, and he and I sat alone on the veranda nursing our drinks (and perhaps his wounded pride). As we watched the scudding clouds he told me that there were only two places on earth where he felt he belonged - Botswana and Fiji - and yet he was never at peace in either of them. When he was in Fiji the island lost its luster and he yearned for the Kalahari; when in Botswana nothing would do but the coral sands of the South Pacific. I commented that Namibia must be purgatory for him, so close to Botswana, but he replied that it made no difference as his soul would never find peace, for it had been taken from him long ago by a Fiji muti man.

One gets accustomed to hearing to all sorts of barstool confessions, especially when traveling abroad where ex-pats gather, but this was something outside my experience and I waited for the tale to unfold. It seems that my host had once been hired to train Peace Corps volunteers in Fiji, and although it was against policy he became romantically involved with a beautiful young volunteer. She was a free spirit and just the balm for his battered heart, and so he let it lead him astray, for he was an old Fiji hand and knew that there are laws more unforgiving than those of the United States Peace Corps that apply without mercy to all transgressors. One of these, known to native Fijians, is that it is mortal peril to swim at sea on a night with a high tide and full moon. At these times the spirit world overlaps this plane of existence, and if those supernatural beings that inhabit the sea do not devour you, a Muti man may come down the beach, speak your name and take your soul.

Love surely makes fools of us all, and so on a night where phosphorescence set the sea afire and the moon cast the light of its full, pale face on the waters, these star-crossed lovers shed their clothes and walked hand in hand into the waves. In this ecstatic moment a light flickered on the strand, and to his horror my Irish friend saw a demon incarnate: a Muti man, a black magician and shaman of great power, masked with a candle on his head.

Muti in Southern and East Africa means the practice of traditional medicine. The term was known to me and my host, though he used it now in reference to the shamans of Fiji. Black magicians in Africa and Oceania are feared for their trade in body parts, but on these nights in Fiji they had another purpose. My host knew that if the figure on the beach touched one of the swimmers and spoke their name, their soul would be taken. He stood transfixed between his companion and his doom as the masked figure with the eldritch light came closer. The Muti man walked silently into the water, fingers extended to touch the beating heart caged beneath the breastbone. My host heard his name uttered from the shadows of the mask and just like that it was done. The Muti man withdrew and the swimmers stumbled to the shore.

My host explained that this supernatural event caused him to lose the thread of his life, becoming in an instant a shiftless shade without a center, hopelessly astray. It is one of the best rationalizations of a mid-life crisis I have ever heard, but my companion was absolutely convinced that his soul had been snatched.

While there is therapy for the rest of us, those damned by dark magic require more powerful muti to break the spell and that, too, has its cost. While he spoke of returning to Fiji to barter for his soul, I doubted my Irish companion would attempt it. What was taken so freely may not be returned without price, and even the damned prefer limbo to the abyss. We felt the hot African wind stirring in the valley while the Southern Cross swung across the heavens and after a moment of silence we spoke of other things.

The Educational Tour Marm has tagged me with a meme and the task of sharing eight random facts about myself and passing along the challenge to eight other bloggers. Since this blog, with all its random interests and revealing moments, has already put forth a great deal that might otherwise qualify for this exercise, this may pose something of a challenge. It also requires three more personal admissions than the last meme of this nature that came my way this past January - though it did prompt terrific posts from two among those I tagged: Geoffrey Chaucer and Ben Fuller at Namibia Notes.

Now then, what's there to say that has not already taken a full turn on the catwalk?

1) I had an ancestor, Col. Archibald Gracie, who was on the Titanic and survived the ordeal long enough to testify at hearings and write one of the definitive first-hand accounts of the disaster before succumbing to the effects of exposure eight months after the ship went down. He was my Great Grandfather Archibald Gracie Ogden's 1st cousin, and hence mine thrice removed. In our family papers is a letter written by a distant Ogden relative who was on the Carpathia and sent Archibald Gracie ashore in his dry clothes.

2) My 1st car was a 1967 vintage Series IIA South African Army surplus landrover. We bought it in 1996 in South Africa through a graduate school friend's family auction house for US $4,000. We outfitted it with 5 jerry cans and a Hi-Lift Jack and took to calling it "Teddy" because it carried that big stick. Teddy Landrover was kept on -and off - the road during our Fulbright year in Namibia with the labor and ingenuity of bush mechanics who managed to spot weld the frame, overhaul the transmission and replace the gear shift with makeshift tools.

3) I met my wife at the Meteor Hotel bar in Grootfontein, Namibia. To be precise, I had met her once previously outside the post office, but we connected months later and if it hadn't been for the black Akubra "Snowy River" cowboy hat I sported in those days I doubt she would have recognized me. As it was, I had to pay the local guy I was drinking with $20 Rand to leave the two of us alone to get better acquainted: best investment I've ever made. The Meteor Hotel is named for the Hoba Meteorite: " the heaviest meteorite in the world and the largest naturally-occurring mass of iron known to exist on the surface of the earth." This space rock landed a few kilometers outside of Grootfontein 80,000 years ago.

4) I collect stuff. I know this is hardly a revelation given the cabinet of curiosities that this blog tends to become, but amid the utter clutter here and there are accumulations of stamps, coins, patriotic covers and much else besides. My one guilty collection - guilty because of the expense and my complete lack of appropriate display space - is a vast assortment of matte finished metal toy soldiers in 54mm scale and depicting units of the American Civil War. There are upwards of 350 figures by now, enough to field an understrength regiment at need, but I'm still looking for a few good zouaves and one can never have enough cavalry...

5) I was an English major. I am fond of saying that I am a walking advertisement for the benefits of a liberal arts education for a good generalist without a clear focus in life. I have accumulated a substantial amount of knowledge and expertise in other matters along the way - natural history and science and psychology and a vast store of trivia - but it was learning how to learn and exposure to different systems of thought that gave me the ability to move between disciplines and integrate what I find at the interstices.

6) I have been known to lampoon my colleagues and associates in song, often at those dreaded overnight "retreats" where you end up spending far more time together of a more informal nature than is generally "safe for work". As one who tends to snore, the group accommodation this entails is not a pleasant prospect and I end up wishing at these times that we would remember that retreat is also a verb. Nonetheless, I am nothing if not irrepressible and do love a stage, so I tend to come out with sing along ballads with new lyrics set to show tunes and old standards to twist the tails of my co-workers and bosses. Thus far it has endeared me to them rather than prompted an early exit interview. My family has this same tradition for milestone birthdays and weddings.

7) I was an accomplice in one of the greatest senior pranks in Haverford College history - and this at one of the many schools that expelled Chevy Chase, in this case after an incident with a cow on the 3th floor of a dormitory. Four of us got student council funding for something we called the Main Line Construction Corps whose propose was to "erect structures on campus". We used the first $50 bucks to by paint and rollers and plot the transformation of an isolated security shack into a Fotomat. That certainly dates me; I guess it would have to be an ATM kiosk now. The trick was that the guard almost never left the shack unattended, except for a 5 minute window when the shifts changed at 2 a.m. We lurked in the woods until the moment arrived, then dashed out and slapped on a bright yellow coat with blue trim and a prefabricated sign before the lights of the returning security car appeared through the trees. They left it that way for several months afterward and I must admit it brightened the old thing up considerably.

8) My fourth grade history teacher had me teach my class the section on the American Civil War. To this day I have no idea how this idea came to fruition, but I had been captivated by this period of history and was reading everything I could find on the subject. She probably figured it was a good way to keep me engaged rather than lobbing back-bench rebuttals to the standard lesson plan. I think I lectured the class for most of a week and gave them the toughest quiz they were likely to see that side of high school. Even Hannah Morgan, the smart girl I had a crush on, missed the question on John Brown. This solidified my nerdy reputation at middle school, but also gave me a taste of power and how absolute power tends to corrupt. I did not go forward with my initial impulse to learn everything there was to know about WWI so I could teach the next week's history lesson too.

Now that that's settled, here are 8 fascinating, informative, enigmatic bloggers to whom I extend this opportunity to reveal all that they dare in 8 random facts about themselves:

June 26, 2007

A sandlot game seems an ideal pursuit on this expanse of lawn at Windrock overlooking Buzzard's Bay. There are certainly enough cousins in the 1st and 2nd degree to field a full compliment of players on either side, and one might well assume that this field has hosted such splendid summer recreation for generations. In fact, it has only recently become lawn.

My brother-in-law Justin is pitching from what was for decades a corner of a vast vegetable garden, put in by my grandfather in the 1950s and still in use into the late 1990s. The old septic field - a bee-hive brick cistern with ceramic pipes - was there in the infield for over 100 years and in use until 2004, when an upgraded system was mandated to renovate the "Little House" for summer rental. Before it was a garden, and before my Grandparents bought the property in 1947, there was a grass tennis court here. Before that there was sheep pasture, cleared from a tangle of Atlantic white cedar, scrub oak and pitch pine. Go back far enough and one finds the retreating edge of the last ice-age, which left the bluff and cobble beach and granite erratics like "Goat Rock" where goats indeed frolicked during my mother's childhood, and where her grand-daughter the cowgirl in the sand perches in the image at right. Roots go deep here, and though the scale of our 60-year tenure is but a brief moment in the history of the land it is our imprint that is most acutely felt.

Lest one get the impression that gathering at Windrock is all play and no work, the place is maintained by a tremendous amount of family labor. There are always projects to attend to, and what my grandfather once did virtually on his own, drafting an assistant when needed from the ready pool of child and grandchild labor, is now taken on by many. My Uncle Rob and Uncle John are mainstays of these efforts, having tinker's skills and inclinations. Here they try and disassemble the corroded iron pipes of the old hand pump - an iconic fixture at the side of the big house that has perched above another brick cistern since the house was built. Rainwater empties from gutters into the cavern beneath the pump to a depth of 8 feet. The water is not potable -indeed it is a mystery to me that we haven't had an outbreak of cholera yet - but the pump itself is loved by children who work its handle and watch the water splash into pails for ponies or to rinse scuba gear. This particular project hit a snag as we attempted to loosen the final cast iron cap on the pump mechanism and managed to shatter it. There was a bone blocking the vacuum chamber, confirming the wisdom in having a deep artesian well to serve the household.

But then, Windrock has always been a place to take risks and run wild, where skinned knees and sunburns are par for the course and bare feet toughen as the summer progresses. It is a place for children to explore and expand their zones of comfort. The beach is one frontier that successively emboldened swimmers and sailors ultimately transcend. The woods are another, where last weekend troops of sword-wielding pirates renovated their forts of pine duff and brush. It is precisely the sense that they belong here that emboldens children to run and play and make it their own. There are public places, I know, that have this effect as well, but it is that sense of place, of knowing the ground where you stand and your place in its history and future, that provides our center.

Our family is particularly blessed to share family lands with each other and a wide circle of friends and acquaintances. This sense of hospitality, of always having room for one more, characterizes how my grandparents ran their household, and it is a value they have passed on through the generations.

June 25, 2007

One of the drawbacks of this season of outdoor pleasures and long days away from the office is that work goes on even while one is on holiday and it can take awhile to dig out from under upon returning from vacation. So it is with blogging, at least for those of us who make a regular habit of it. There are a number of worthy carnivals that have long since struck their tents without my remarking on their arrival, and so I belatedly draw the following to your attention as deserving a reprise:

On a different note, I am honored to be chosen by Bill West of West in New England as a blogger who makes him think. The "Thinking Blogger Award" was conceived by blogger Ilker Yoldas on February 11th of this year, and since then I have been recognized by three different readers with this distinction. Mr. Yoldas has subsequently stated that "I also noticed that some are tagged more than once. I guess I should have included a rule to leave a comment here so that a blogger doesn't get "nominated" twice. =)." Feeling that there is little to be gained by having successive grades of this honor - one shudders to think that there might one day be the equivalent of a Thinking Blogger Award with Oak Leaf Cluster and Swords - I gratefully accept this acknowledgment from Bill West, and Assistant Village Idiot before him, but respectfully decline to pass the meme along multiple times. My initial pick for 5 thinking bloggers can be found here.

June 24, 2007

There were 45 of us down at the big red house by the sea this weekend and it felt like we could have accommodated another dozen at least. There were four generations of Barkers from my Gran (96) down to her great great nephew (barely over a year) and all 15 of her great grandchildren. The real joy of the occasion was that it was neither prompted by a funeral nor by a wedding but by the desire for extended branches of the family to reconnect at one special spot, and to build new relationships across the lines of ever more distant kinship so that we might continue to cherish the family as well as the family lands we share. I met second cousins I have not seen since childhood, and watched our feral young trooping off to build forts, climb trees and dig for clams - just as generations of us had before them - and delighting in their own fresh discoveries.

June 22, 2007

And I am off to the shore for the weekend with many kith and kin. Much quahog stuffing, sun soaking and singing 'round a driftwood fire on the agenda, but perhaps not much blogging until Sunday night, when I expect to have a few pictures and memories to share. Windrock is playing host to 45 of us, including many Barker cousins of the 1st and second (and 3rd) degree.

Neither a wedding nor a funeral draws us together, but the chance to enjoy one special place (Windrock) while having a short but important family meeting about another (Monhegan). Our time on the Island is fast approaching, and for the first week of July there will be no blogging at all - just gaslight and gulls mewing and the sun going down in a blaze of glory over the Gulf of Maine. Here's hoping you have special places to be and loved ones to share them with this summer.

June 21, 2007

The Swedes, so I am told, celebrate Midsummer with herring, potatoes schnapps and beer, taking the Summer Solstice off as a national holiday. This sounds eminently civilized to me - though I might pass on the herring - but a far cry from the fertility rites of their Viking Era ancestors where the Earth and whatever else was handy was impregnated to ensure a bountiful harvest. The Finns take the Bacchanalia a bit closer to its pagan roots, according to the Wikipedia entry for Midsummer, treating their Juhannus holiday as

"the year's most notable occasion for drunkenness and revelry...A great many people get very drunk and happy. It is also an occasion when many people look for a relationship (often a rather short one). The statistics for the number of people drowned and killed in accidents are morbidly counted every year while the number of assaults also peaks."

The feast of St. John also falls at this time and is celebrated in much of Europe, another melding of the pagan calender with Christian ritual. But for neo-pagans of a Celtic persuasion this is the day of all days to make a pilgrimage to Stonehenge, where this morning as the sun rose between the heel stone and the alter, the Globe and Mail reports

"About 24,000 people gathered at the stone circle in Wiltshire, in southwestern England. Dancers writhed to the sound of drums and whistles as floodlights coloured the ancient pillars shades of pink and purple. Couples snuggled under plastic sheets."

I once endured a Thanksgiving dinner in Namibia in the company of a group of American evangelical missionaries who explained to their African guests that it was quite alright to feast while others went without because "God loves a party." The Old Gods clearly did, and this is the time of year in the northern hemisphere when those old urges to hoist a glass and dance around a fire become nigh irresistible, even if that fire is the backyard barbecue and there are no admitted Druids in attendance.

I will celebrate the longest day of the year by getting out into some of it and away from my keyboard. Tonight my children and I will watch the will-o-wisp lights of the fireflies in the meadow at the bottom of the garden and imagine that faeries are dancing in circles of light.

June 20, 2007

"Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate:Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And Summer's lease hath all too short a date..."

- Sonnet #18, William Shakespeare

I am a hopeless romantic when it comes to summer. Coles Phillips' "Fade Away Girl", bookended by her Edwardian beaus, appeals to my fancy as completely as their own. Who knew that the sirens of my great-grandmother's era could be so bewitching? Never mind that their impractical bathing attire was heavy and scratched and trapped great clots of sand in uncomfortable places; it may be false advertising but the style of the thing is sweet seduction.

Summer's idyll is all white sand and blue water and straw bonnets and porch swings. It is lemonade and salt-water taffy, the smell of cut grass and the tinkle of wind chimes. Ticks and mosquitoes need not mar this reverie, nor the modern world intrude with the drone of suburban mowers.

Those sails on the horizon are not pleasure boats, but pirates. NC Wyeth's tumescent clouds become giants on the strand. A quixotic lens reveals another world; the golden sun swirls like dandelion wine in the glass. Dreams of paradise break the surface like trout and dip again beneath the dappled water.

Let us as the gods do, 'Tis the wiser part;Leisure and love's pleasure Seek the young in heartFollow the old fashion, Down into the street!Down among the maidens, And the dancing feet!So short a day,And life so quickly hastingAnd in study wasting Youth that would be gay!

-12 century Latin verse

Tell me that these are impossible dreams. Say that summers past were hardly such spun-sugar nostalgia, that this treacherous season is but a brief climax before autumn decay and winter death. Tell me that life is ruled by tooth and claw: "nasty, brutish and short". I know these things and I tell you that the ripened fruit is far sweeter for the knowledge that its season passes. Old hearts may be young again in summer, take flight on mended wings.

The gong rolls ominously above the shoal; shall we therefore fear to put to sea? Fog lurks on the banks, but the fish are there for the catching. Spring is the season of resurrection, but only in summer do we savor the fullness of life, its lurking dangers and certain end making it all the more precious and worth the risk. And though the coin of summer has another side beside the shining face it shows, not every shadow must be the shadow of death, nor every solitude be lonely.

"By the time it came to the edge of the Forest, the stream had grown-up, so that it was almost a river, and, being grown-up, it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to when it was younger, but moved more slowly. For it knew now where it was going, and it said to itself, "There is no hurry. We shall get there some day." But all the little streams higher up in the Forest went this way and that, quickly, eagerly, having so much to find out before it was too late. " - A.A. Milne , "Pooh sticks"

June 19, 2007

Connecticut's state flower has an ephemeral beauty, and for a couple of weeks around Midsummer it is the season's crowning glory. Mountain laurel (kalmia latifolia) assumes the mantle of summer in a cloud of pale pink and creamy white, achingly lovely in the cool of the forest, bright and shimmering in the heath by the wetland verge.

Clad in broadleaf evergreen with ruffles of lace at the wrists and throat, Mountain laurel is the undisputed queen of the rocky forest, her courtiers the saplings of beech and oak, her minstrel the lilting call of the wood thrush. No invaders pass her tangled gates: her thickets bar the Tatarian hoards and keep Berberis at bay. Even the wood goats, those satyrs the deer, cannot mar her voluminous skirts as they so rudely abuse her handmaids the rhododendron.

Only the bitter cold of a fell winter without snow will cause her to wither, and yet with warmer days she puts on new raiment to replace her frostbitten cloak. She is Lady Greensleeves, and all the woodlands do her honor on these Mountain laurel days on the cusp of Midsummer Eve.